


Beauty vs Glory

by 7CuteCreationImagination7



Series: Teen Wolf Ficlets/Headcanons/AUs [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Always Female Stiles Stilinski, Bad Parent Sheriff Stilinski, Feels, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Lydia is a Good Friend, Scott McCall is a Good Friend, Secrets, Sick Claudia Stilinski, idk - Freeform, no romantic relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 01:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15256602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7CuteCreationImagination7/pseuds/7CuteCreationImagination7
Summary: Stanisława "Stiles" Stilinski is not a beautiful girl.In fact, many mistake her for a boy.





	Beauty vs Glory

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> I'm not quite sure why I wrote this, but I just sort of like Fem!Stiles stories -- it changes the plot quite a bit!
> 
> This isn't really very plotty, more of a character study, but I hope you like it.
> 
> Lots and Lots of Love, God Bless, 7CCI7

Stiles knows she isn’t beautiful. The girl also knows that most assume her to be a boy. She doesn’t know if she cares. 

It started when her mom got sick. Because it was her long, black hair that had clued her into the fact that her mom’s mind was going weird.

At seven years old, Stiles hadn’t liked routines, they were boring, and she always managed to find ways to make them more efficient or more fun, or more interesting, but there is one routine she likes.

At seven thirty am, she slips onto the chair, and her mom is supposed to push her in, and spray her hair with the water-conditioner mixture. It takes fifteen minutes, but her mom does two french braids, tight and pretty, with red hair-ties at the end. 

One day, she sits on the chair, and her mom does something strange. The first sign that something is off, is that she doesn’t smile, and doesn’t put the conditioner in. 

The woman looks at Stiles, and then says, in a colder, strange voice, “ What do you want?”

Stiles asks for her braids. The small girl doesn’t mention it to anyone, but her mom stops doing her hair and starts doing strange things. It is only when her mom breaks her arm that Stiles tells her dad what is going on. 

Soon her mom gets admitted. Then, after she holds a scalpel up to Stiles’ throat, the girl doesn’t see her mom again, at least, not until she runs in at the sound of a heart-rate monitor flat-lining.

But, once Stiles’ mom stopped doing her hair, the girl hadn’t known how to do it herself. The little girl had tried everything, but since her dad was too busy, and she was the weird girl that wasn’t paying attention and talked too much, so she had no people to talk to, to ask.

So she had gone to the hair-dressers and passed the woman a picture of Maggie Gyllenhaal. The woman had been sceptical, but Stiles had smiled at it. She looked like Quake. She looked powerful. 

Stiles' dad had just nodded tiredly at her newly short hair. The girl tells herself it doesn’t hurt when her mom, her kind, sweet, lovely mom, tells her dad that she is a boy and that she is trying to kill her. 

Stiles doesn’t know which part of those statements hurt the most.

When Stiles wears a black dress at her mom’s funeral, bandages from where her mom had clumsily scratched at her arms peeking from underneath the grey cardigan, she swears that she will never wear a dress again, the heavy dark fabric tugging at her, like it wants to pull her down into the floor. 

Some things change, after that. Her dad begins drinking, takes so many shifts at the station that he gets countless awards. Doesn’t ever have to see her cleaning up broken glass or the scratches on her face from when he had begun yelling and throwing bottles. 

Things get dark. People forget about her, and she is a shadow. Pale, skinny, her face peppered with moles, and her voice becomes white noise in the background. 

Then Scott arrives. He calls her buddy, dude and man, and Stiles doesn’t bother correcting him. She hasn’t had anyone talk to her in a friendly way, without pity or disdain or indifference for so long, she doesn’t want to ruin it by revealing that she is a girl.

The fact that she isn’t beautiful resurfaces when she is thirteen. Stiles stares at the pamphlet that she has stolen from the Nurse’s office, and she tries not to cry. 

It isn’t just the fact that she has to deal with unfair monthly visits from mother nature that makes her weep. It is the fact that she hasn’t got the boobs, or hips, or waist that this pamphlet is promising. 

Then the teenager gets angry. She is Stanislawa Stilinski. Her name means “One who achieves glory”. She isn’t born to be beautiful, she isn’t born for the pretty curves that Lydia has, or the beauty of the other girls, with names like Bella, Linda, Rachel or Ellen.

Their names speak of beauty and grace. Her one speaks of honour, glory, and warriors. 

Stiles starts buying her clothes with Scott. Boys clothes are comfier, more durable, and are usually cheaper. They also hide her small, but present boobs, and have dark enough colours that even if she does leak through her pads, it can be hidden.

Sure, once every three months, she is forced to sneak off, on her own, to get supplies. It isn’t just that it's girls stuff, it is just a day when she gets things she wished she could have someone (her mom) getting them with her.

Chocolate, bras, pads, tampons. Makeup, for when she wants to practice at home. ADHD medication — her daily doses and the small tub of Adderall for when her brain is being particularly annoying. Small pamphlets from Al-Anon, on how to help someone else get over Alcohol Addiction. 

And life goes on. 

She gets onto the lacrosse team, and almost corrects Coach when he tells her to go into the boy’s locker room. But then Stiles thinks.

It appears that everyone — and by everyone, she means everyone who didn’t know her mom, so that is everyone except for her dad-- has wrongly assumed that she is male. 

She could be offended. She ponders having an identity crisis, but it turns out that her brain is secure on the fact that she is a girl. 

And to be honest, she doesn’t see why she should correct people. Her clothes are comfier and cheaper than those at the girl’s clothes shop. No one makes comments when she eats two servings of curly fries in one sitting. Stiles gets to live with the satisfaction of being the only girl on the lacrosse team. 

It is not a bad situation. 

All she has to do is never take off her shirt, and avoid needing a shower. Luckily, due to some freak of genetics, she doesn’t sweat much, so no one questions it when she doesn’t follow people into the showers and is later seen with her shirt on.

Her dad starts drinking less. Her grades get better. She gets bored as school becomes easier.

Then she hears about a severed body in the woods. The girl runs her hands through her short hair, wipes off the remnants of her failed attempts at eyeliner, and decides to investigate.

On one hand, it is a severed body, and, how freaky is that. On the other hand, her dad is out there in the woods, probably right next to where someone chopped another person in half, and she can't protect him from her bedroom.

Stiles gets Scott to come with her and doesn’t see him until the next day, where the whole thing starts to snowball. 

Werewolves exist. So do weird lizard things. Deaton exists — he is his own weird creature, she decides. Lydia is whatever she is. 

It continues with the mess, but she usually has people helping her figure things out, until a witch coven decides to capture Derek and Scott. It makes sense, the two most prominent wolves of Beacon Hills. Also, everyone else has left for holidays or isn’t as big a target as the wolf that mixed with hunters, or the last remnant of the legendary Hale pack.

Stiles works it out, after three days, and knows that someone wanted her to work it out.

It is easy, too easy, and she doesn’t like it, but this is Scott, her best friend, and this is Derek, the guy that she literally spent two hours trying to keep alive. 

So she shows up, and pays no attention to what she is wearing, because, duh, she has way bigger problems.

When she arrives at the house, the seemingly normal house on the edge of town, she feels it. It is like a pull, a crackle of electricity, the smell of ozone in the air.

It reminds her of the swimming pool and mountain ash, but it is darker, sourer than it was then, so she ignores the bizarre connections her brain makes, passing it off as the effects of sleep deprivation and adrenaline.

The door opens.

Stiles steps in. She looks around, and for a second, wonders why her hair isn’t falling on her face, but then yells at her brain to focus because this really isn’t the time.

The smell of sour ozone gets stronger as she goes upstairs, and then sees three women, in front of two familiar faces. 

“ Look, ladies, I want an explanation. You wanted me here. You took my pack. Explain.Now.”

She’s tired, and the two males are staring at her, and she is way, way too exhausted to be deciphering facial expressions. 

“ That isn’t a nice way to introduce yourself, but, given your condition, I guess we’ll let it slide. The explanation is simple. You have power, both natural, social and supernatural. We want you to join us, and then we will let the puppies go. Four women are better than three. We want to use you.”

The woman smiles at her, and then says,

‘Pity. We could have made you beautiful, the most gorgeous member of the coven. I guess you will just have to be our pretty little power source.”

Stiles just blinks at them, and before she can even consent — because apparently evil people have issues with consent and permission and how initiation rituals done without consent are mean, the witches become chanting, their irises turning black.

The girl runs over to Scott, and though she can feel a chain, an invisible, supernatural chain, forming, tethering her to these evil women, she checks him, looking at the cuts and bruises that aren’t healing. 

She ignores the way that two pairs of eyes stare at her body, ignore the burning on her hands and ankles as the chain begins to take a stronger form.

Then things happen.

Stiles sees a large gash on Derek’s abdomen, hears Scott whimper, and feels her wrists and ankles being pulled back. 

She will not be their toy. Her name means glory and honour. 

A warmth begins to build inside her veins, and she prays. She hasn’t prayed in a while, but she prays to whoever hung the stars, controls the seas, and gave this world life. Stiles isn’t too sure about faith, but she knows she needs help, and that asking for help hopefully won’t hurt.

The chains burn against her skin, Scott begins to cry and Derek looks paler by the second. He heart hurts, and she feels the ice of black flames burning on it, and nothing is going to happen and—

A yellow light builds under her skin, and it drowns out the black flames that the chains are making, burning through them, light and warmth searing through the obsidian steel, like a knife through butter.

Stiles watches as the chains on the boy’s bodies crumble under the light, and as their cuts and scars heal themselves, like the light is speeding up the healing.

She turns, and feels the light build up on her hands,; 

“My name is Stanisława Stilinski, and with the power invested in me, I banish you!”

The words flow from her mouth like they are meant to ; like they’ve been waiting to come out. The women scream and scream as their own flames turn on them, and swallow them, and they disappear like flash cotton. 

The light dies down, and she feels the adrenaline crash as she looks at the two men. Dizziness takes over, and she dimly realises, as her vision fades to black, as arms stretch out to catch her, that she just gave away her gender. 

 

Stiles wakes up on a bed. It isn’t hers, she knows that instantly. Her bed has one flattened pillow, a lumpy duvet, and a dip where she removed the springs because she wanted to make trampoline shoes.

This bed is huge, and like, is the softest thing she has ever laid upon. Stiles almost snuggles down under the soft, warm duvet when she remembers this is not her bed.

The teenage girl opens her tawny eyes, and she pulls herself off the bed, reluctantly waving goodbye to the warmth and comfort of the mattress.

Best case scenario she’s at someone's house after sleepwalking, and they won’t recognise her. Worst case scenario, she’s been captured. Again.

Stiles knows that finding out where she is should be the main priority, but her bladder is protesting, and she needs to fix her hair.

The teenager finds a bathroom, and steps in do her business and laugh at the sight of herself in the mirror.

A blue bow clip, one that she hadn’t seen nor used since she was five was hanging haphazardly off the side of her head, clutching desperately to some strange of hair.

Her outfit is just as bizarre. A white cotton bra peeks out of a tight neon red tank top, baggy grey sweatpants just grasping onto the slight curves other hips.

Her face, her face though is what makes her dissolve into giggles. She remembers putting on eyeliner, days ago, secretly in her room, but she doesn’t remember taking it off. There are purple eye bags underneath her eyes, and she looks rather pale. 

This needs to be fixed.

Stiles washes her face, and wipes the bottom of her eyes, trying to make it look like she tried a smokey eyed look. She wishes she had worn her tight white sports bra because if anyone does see her in this, the act will be up.

But the girl, shrugs, and decides that if she is going to look feminine for once, she is going to do it well. She brushes her short hair with her fingers, and clips it backwards, making her look dainty and pretty. Then, after she rubs some toothpaste from her tongue, she plans her escape.

There must be windows somewhere. 

The girl steps out of the bathroom, and goes up to the window, wondering how she is supposed to smash through the thick glass, when someone, a man, clears their throat.

Stiles whirls around to see Derek Hale staring at her questioningly, her legs bent and fists clenched in the forgotten action of punching through the glass.

“Hi? Is this your loft?”

He opens his mouth to speak, his look still rather indecipherable when Scott runs in, like a bulldozer.

Oh no. She has makeup on and isn’t hiding her small curves, and they weren’t supposed to find out like this. The repercussions of people finding out, of being a girl in a patriarchal culture, of having to be in the girls' locker room—

Because her brain appears to short circuit, she blurts out,

“The girl’s locker room is gross! No one ever goes in there, so, like the showers are covered in mildew. Also, do you know how hard it is to get on the lacrosse team when you are a girl! Because I do! That’s why I didn’t correct coach! “

Isaac, Boyd and Erica are now standing next to Scott and Derek, and Stiles doesn’t want to deal with them; they don’t like her, the feeling is mostly reciprocated, and Stiles wants to go home and hope she doesn’t get in trouble with her dad.

There is no recognition in their eyes until Isaac gasps and his eyes look up and down her body and then flick to her face, and he seems caught in between staring at her non-flattened chest and her face.

“You’re a girl?!”

“Ten points to Lahey. You get a cookie. Now that we’ve established that I am a girl and that you all are blind, can someone please take me home.”

Scott steps forward, and then, stops, like he doesn’t know what to do.

“Scotty. If you stop inviting me for video-game sleepovers because of this, I will make your mom give you the safe sex lecture. If you try to argue, I will literally call my dad, and get him to give it to you, with your mom. I am your best friend, and if that changes because I wear makeup and have boobs, Scott, I will be livid.”

Scott hugs her. The other wolves look sheepish, like chastised puppies. Derek takes her home, and no one talks about the fact that she became a glowstick of power. Derek also gives her a phone number, Stiles skypes Cora Hale and gains a new best friend.

Nothing changes.

Well, some things change.

Lydia teaches her how to do subtle makeup, enough to make her look more feminine and more pretty, but not enough that she looks like her mother. Lydia also helps her with her wardrobe, teaches her how she could tailor shirts, or match certain items of clothing, to make her look more feminine. It makes Stiles get misty-eyed because someone is finally teaching her. 

Her mom was supposed to do this. When she was little, before she was accidentally roped into this bizarre charade, she dreamed of going shopping with her mom, getting ready for things like prom or dances with the aid of her mother.

Stiles calls Lydia mom once when it’s been eight hours of sewing, taking down notes, and learning her own measurements. Lydia doesn’t say anything about it, but a gorgeous red skirt shows up in the bathroom the next day, exactly the size of Stiles' waist.

Scott doesn’t change, but he does start carrying pads and Advil around for her, which makes him the best friend ever. He tells his mom, who scolds them both for not telling her, and then teaches Stiles how to do her unruly hair, now that she’s trying to grow it out.

At school, nothing changes much. The occasional whisper, pointing and stares are fine. Stiles has never been one to attract much attention, so it bubbles down after a few weeks, the teachers oblivious, as Stiles still wears baggy, form hiding clothes.

The Pack are apologetic and guilty for a few weeks until Stiles pranks them by painting their nails pink as they sleep. This starts a prank war, and the tension dissolves.

Then the supernatural world comes back with full force, with Kanimas, Alpha Packs, Nogistunes — and the punches just keep coming, so no one even has time to see that Stiles is looking more and more like a girl each day like puberty finally decided to finish the job.

Stiles still isn’t pretty, she isn’t beautiful. Her name is hard to pronounce and doesn’t melt off the tongue. Her skin is littered with moles and scars. She doesn’t have the curves that the other girls do, lean muscle replacing any soft curves which were beginning to form. Her nose flicks up at the end, and her eyes are huge, her features and distinctive, but not dainty.

But Stanisława is glorious. She is the only human in a pack of werewolves, kitsunes, were-coyotes, banshees and other creatures. Whenever a monster comes purely to kill, hurt and steal, righteous fire burns her from the inside out, and the darkness is eliminated by a warmth and yellow light. She patches her friends together, stitches them up, and goes after their attackers in the dead of night. Stiles holds them as they cry, as they laugh, as they scream, and they do the same for her.

 

She isn’t beautiful, no. She is much more than that.

She is glorious.


End file.
